Biography – ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONALE ARMAS LAUNIS

Armas Launis ((1884 Hämeenlinna – 1959 Nice)

Armas Launis is a very versatile Finnish personality. He was a University Professor, a researcher, a music composer, ethnomusicologist, teacher, writer and journalist. He was an enthusiastic traveller eager to make new acquaintances, interested in all oral traditions. This hard-working, demanding scholar forcefully endeavoured to renew the Opera genre in his country.

Launis’s musical and literary gifts are evident in the ten operas he wrote (libretto and music). The Seven Brothers (Armas Maasalo, Finnish Opera and National Theatre 1913, Kuopio Song Festival 1914 and, conducted by Tauno Hannikainen, Finnish Opera, 1923) and Kullervo (Armas Launis, Finnish Opera 1917) were performed on stage and broadcast several times in France and Monaco under the direction of Henri Tomasi and Charles Boisard. The opera Aslak Hetta was performed in concert at Finlandia (March 2004) conducted by Sakari Oramo – RSO – and broadcast on radio. (CD recorded by ONDINE – ODE 1050-2D). Excerpts from the opera Jehudith conducted by Eugène Bigot were broadcast on radio (Paris-Inter 1954). Launis also composed melodies, cantatas, choruses, orchestral suites and the music for the first Finnish ethnographic film Wedding in Karelia, land of poems (1921).

Launis studied at the Orchestra School of the Helsinki Philharmonic Society, then at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin (Wilhelm Klatte) and in Weimar (Waldemar von Baussnern). At the University of Helsinki, he studied with Ilmari Krohn and defended his doctoral thesis in 1911. He taught theory and composition in Helsinki and music analysis at the University from 1918 to 1922 as a lecturer.

Launis was one of the first ethnomusicologists and collectors of Finnish folk music. He visited Lapland (1904, 1905 and 1922), Kainuu (1902), Ingria (1903, 1906) and Estonia (1930). He listened to and wrote down melodies and recorded famous singers, mourners and kantele players. His collections, publications and travelogues are still authoritative and form a valuable part of the national heritage. His classification of melodies follows Krohn’s, which serves as a basis for the method developed by Kodály and Bartók. His later travels in North Africa among the Bedouins and Berbers are reflected in the operas Theodora and Jehudith.

In 1920 Launis was granted a lifelong pension by the Finnish state, which made his stays and travels abroad easier. In the early 1920s, while travelling, he prepared an educational programme for teaching music to all. He founded and directed a folk conservatory in Helsinki and several other cities. In 1930 he settled permanently in Nice.

In France, Launis was a regular correspondent for the newspapers Helsingin Sanomat, Uusi Suomi and the illustrated Suomen Kuvalehti. He was one of the founders of the Société de la presse étrangère de la Côte d’Azur, a member of the Association française d’expansion et d’échanges artistiques and actively participated in cultural and musical exchanges between France and Finland.